There is probably another flaw on the Chargers, but they've got a really good roster. The expectations are concerning: they're the FAVORITE TO WIN THE DIVISION. And Vegas has them pegged for 9 wins, which is just absurd. This might be the year where other idiots jump on board the "Chargers win the Super Bowl" bandwagon (hello, I'm Will Brinson, your captain, please take your seats and grab a double bourbon, it's going to be a very bump ride). If the Bolts can avoid shooting themselves in the foot -- which is a real things they have done for roughly 10 years now -- they can make some noise. You could also argue the linebackers aren't a perfect unit and Philip Rivers needs another wide receiver to emerge alongside Keenan Allen if you're looking for actual football reasons they won't be great.

This age 23 group houses some of the most notorious draft disasters in this time period: Tim Tebow, Christian Ponder and Jake Locker were all 23 by Sept. 1 of their draft year. Locker, drafted No. 8 overall in 2011, was so tired of football that he walked away from the game at age 26.

All of this could be a red flag for the first overall pick and oldest first-round quarterback, new Cleveland Brown Baker Mayfield, who turned 23 last month. Darnold will be entering his third season when he’s the age Mayfield will be this year as a rookie.

One of the biggest holes the Patriots will need to fill before the start of the 2018 season is at left tackle. Over the next few months, New England will be looking for someone to replace Nate Solder, who signed with the Giants during free agency.

Although the Patriots have several options at left tackle, one player who won't be in the running to win the job is 2017 draft pick Antonio Garcia, and that's because he's no longer on the team. According to ESPN.com, Garcia was released on Friday with a non-football injury designation.

With the left tackle job up for grabs, Garcia seemed like someone who might be able to compete for the spot. After all, the Patriots were so high on him going into the 2017 NFL Draft that they actually traded up 11 spots to grab him in the third round. Garcia was actually the Patriots' second pick in the entire draft because the team didn't have any selections last year in the first or second round.

The decision to cut Garcia means that the former Troy offensive tackle will have ended his one-year career in New England without actually playing in a game for the Patriots. Garcia missed the entire 2017 season over a health issue. According to the Boston Herald, Garcia was dealing with blood clots and had to be put on blood thinners that caused him to lose 40 pounds.

One of the biggest holes the Patriots will need to fill before the start of the 2018 season is at left tackle. Over the next few months, New England will be looking for someone to replace Nate Solder, who signed with the Giants during free agency.

Although the Patriots have several options at left tackle, one player who won't be in the running to win the job is 2017 draft pick Antonio Garcia, and that's because he's no longer on the team. According to ESPN.com, Garcia was released on Friday with a non-football injury designation.

With the left tackle job up for grabs, Garcia seemed like someone who might be able to compete for the spot. After all, the Patriots were so high on him going into the 2017 NFL Draft that they actually traded up 11 spots to grab him in the third round. Garcia was actually the Patriots' second pick in the entire draft because the team didn't have any selections last year in the first or second round.

The decision to cut Garcia means that the former Troy offensive tackle will have ended his one-year career in New England without actually playing in a game for the Patriots. Garcia missed the entire 2017 season over a health issue. According to the Boston Herald, Garcia was dealing with blood clots and had to be put on blood thinners that caused him to lose 40 pounds.

So far, the only negative aspect of Bosa's two-year career has been his training-camp holdout during his rookie summer. Since then, it's been nothing but sacks. Bosa, taken third overall in 2016, has already grabbed 23 sacks in two seasons. This past season, he was the sixth-most efficient pass rusher at his position group, according to PFF. Only two 4-3 defensive ends registered more total pressures than Bosa.

17. Chargers TE Hunter Henry (23)

Finally, the Chargers are Henry's team and he is the Chargers' top tight end. Henry's been forced to share time with future Hall of Famer Antonio Gates during his first two years with the Chargers. Even still, he's managed to put up solid numbers, hauling in 81 passes for 1,057 yards and 12 touchdowns (the sixth-most among tight ends in that span). But what makes Henry such a good player at his age are his all-around contributions. He's much more than just a pass catcher. In 2017, he finished as PFF's second-highest graded tight end, behind only Rob Gronkowski and ahead of players like Travis Kelce, Delanie Walker, and Zach Ertz. He graded that highly because of his run-blocking abilities.

The 85th overall pick in last year's draft, Garcia missed his entire rookie season with blood clots in his lungs, then was cut by the Pats with a non-football injury designation late last week. Garcia is a worthy flyer as a 24-year-old left tackle prospect, but he'll ultimately be a long shot with the Jets.

So far, the only negative aspect of Bosa's two-year career has been his training-camp holdout during his rookie summer. Since then, it's been nothing but sacks. Bosa, taken third overall in 2016, has already grabbed 23 sacks in two seasons. This past season, he was the sixth-most efficient pass rusher at his position group, according to PFF. Only two 4-3 defensive ends registered more total pressures than Bosa.

17. Chargers TE Hunter Henry (23)

Finally, the Chargers are Henry's team and he is the Chargers' top tight end. Henry's been forced to share time with future Hall of Famer Antonio Gates during his first two years with the Chargers. Even still, he's managed to put up solid numbers, hauling in 81 passes for 1,057 yards and 12 touchdowns (the sixth-most among tight ends in that span). But what makes Henry such a good player at his age are his all-around contributions. He's much more than just a pass catcher. In 2017, he finished as PFF's second-highest graded tight end, behind only Rob Gronkowski and ahead of players like Travis Kelce, Delanie Walker, and Zach Ertz. He graded that highly because of his run-blocking abilities.

Expect Henry to thrive in Year 3 without Gates around.

I'm amazed that an avg 40.5 passes / 550 yards per year was 6th in the entire league. did not see that coming ...

Haven they been “in on sports gambling” for decades? Maybe i missed some announcement they are opening their own book?

The NFL wants to be able to say one thing and do another. It's the American Way!

i especially love how the NFL officially claims that it has no involvement with one-day fantasy sports (which the Nevada Gaming Commission has already ruled is gambling, pure and simple)....but multiple individual owners have ownership stakes in FanDuel and Draft Kings, which are also two of the NFL's biggest new sponsors.

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The NFL, led by Roger Goodell and his priority of moral conduct, has forever opposed gambling as a threat to its cherished “integrity of the game.” As recently as four years ago, the league shut down a Fantasy Football convention—involving Tony Romo and dozens of other players—because it was in a convention hall annexed to a casino. Since then, however, the league’s position has, in their words, “evolved” with some mixed messages (some would say hypocrisy).

The NFL has recently embraced fantasy sports companies such as FanDuel and DraftKings, all the while noting that the league does not have an equity stake in either, as Major League Baseball and the NHL (DraftKings) and FanDuel (NBA) do. Of course, influential NFL owners Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft were early investors in DraftKings (Cowboys’ players walk out to the field through the DraftKings Fantasy Lounge). Goodell and league executives have distinguished fantasy from gambling, noting that it does not involve team outcomes but rather a mashup of player outcomes. I have found that reasoning perplexing, since if the NFL was worried about nefarious influences, those forces would have more chance of influencing an individual player outcome than a team outcome involving dozens of interdependent parts.

Of course, the NFL’s embrace of gambling has gone beyond fantasy sports. Several teams have had training camp practices at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, home to an ornate casino. The Lions have a sponsorship deal with MGM. In Green Bay, one of our primary gate sponsors was the Oneida Nation Casino, and our players stayed at the hotel abutting that casino on nights before home games.

And then the NFL ceded its moral high ground. In January 2017 it formally approved relocation of the Raiders to Las Vegas, the country’s gambling mecca. I remember covering those ownership meetings and asking owners about their concerns with the Vegas market. Their apprehension involved whether Vegas would sustain a team long term, whether it was more than a tourist market, etc. What, I asked, about gambling? That was low on their list of concerns. Hearing that, I knew at that moment that the NFL was ready to embrace gambling. Indeed, in discussing the Raiders’ relocation, Roger Goodell praised the regulations in Nevada—the same ones he fought in New Jersey!

So why was the NFL fighting this case so hard? Well, the league preferred, and still prefers, a federal legislative solution that the NFL could influence through its lobbying, over a solution dictated by the Supreme Court and the states. The league is not used to negotiating without a position of strength. Now it will have to try to negotiate “integrity fees” with the states—an ironic term for a league worried about gambling affecting integrity—without its usual leverage.

No matter what happened in the Court and in the states, the NFL has had to be preparing for this inevitability. I have long advocated that the NFL needs to hire a CGO, a Chief Gambling Officer, to get control of this space and determine controls for players, coaches, referees, executives, etc. Now more than ever, the NFL needs a Gambling Czar, akin to the “Head of Integrity” role in various European sports.

Follow the money
The question all the leagues and ommissioners were asking yesterday and today is, of course, this: “How can we best monetize?” Whether it’s the integrity fees, sponsor possibilities in the gambling space, alignment with a certain casino over others, etc., Roger Goodell is likely hearing from his senior executives about the most efficient and profitable ways to monetize this result (besides continue to lobby Congress for a national solution).

The real value to the NFL from sports betting may not be as quantifiable but it is dramatic. Gambling is an incredible fan engagement tool that hooks in fans with no rooting interest in the teams that are playing. And the data is dramatic. According to Nielson Research, bettors make up just 25% of the NFL audience but watch nearly 50% of all NFL regular season game minutes. And then there was this statistic:

• Number of games viewed by the average NFL non-betting fan: 16

• Number of games viewed by the average NFL betting fan: 35

This is powerful data for a league looking under every rock for new sources of revenue. It is the reason fans with no rooting interest engage with the NFL. This is not new information to the NFL, but it certainly crystallizes the power of gambling.

And this is just the beginning. With the NFL recently inking a new $1.5 billion partnership with Verizon, think about the possibilities of in-game betting from a mobile device, wagering on the next touchdown, the next field goal, the next play! The NFL knows its key challenge for future growth is attracting and maintaining younger viewers; engaging them in this space is a strategic way to do so.

On a macro level beyond incremental gains in operating revenues, every NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball franchise just became more valuable. Gambling will bring more engagement, more eyeballs, more ancillary revenue opportunities, more, well, money. And with more money there is more value. Franchise values, about to have a new and impressive data point with the Carolina Panthers sale, will continue to soar with this new fan engagement tool at the starting gate.

Thus, while the NFL expresses some disappointment with the ruling (it had “won” at every other level for the past five years), the league can take solace in the fact that while “integrity” will never be the same, profits will rise. The Supreme Court ruled against the NFL today but may have turned on the spigot for millions, even billions, of future revenue potential.
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